New financial constraints lead to new choices in Angers transportation policy

The financial constraints are starting to influence the strategic choices of Angers city. That one, which is at the same time the core and the wealthiest member of Angers Loire Métropole, buried, at least for years, the project of a South ring road during the last meeting of its municipal council on May 30th. According to Frédéric Beatse, the mayor of Angers, the [others cities of Alm], having to be associated to the project "will not be able to finance a ring road and the second trolley line at the same time" (estimated cost : 350
millions €). 

The choice, approved according different ways by the town councillors of the majority and the minority, could be implemented to other projects, above all the play swimming pool of the Les Hauts de Saint-Aubin disctrict and even to the New banks of Maine. But such financial constraints constitute also an opportunity for Mr Béatse to involve the town towards alternative transport ways, less individuals, less polluting and less costly in fossile energy. He plans to reduce the max speed from 70 to 50 km/h along the Maine express way and to lauch as soon as possible the surveys about the second trolley line and even an extension of the first line towards the South. 

During the last decades, many projects have been dedicated to ease the car traffic in Angers (the late is the doubling of the bridge over the Loire at the South of Angers). Visibly the policy has changed : the desire is to push back cars outside of town while at the same time to promote the no polluting and the collective ways of transport. So the burying of the ring road could be a beginning of a reapprisal.